The Demon Cat of the Capitol

The oldest ghost story in the United States Capitol belongs to the night watchmen. They told of a black cat in the basement crypt that grows as it approaches, to the size of a tiger, and appears before national calamity, before Lincoln, before the 1929 crash. The building genuinely has the bones for it: a crypt built for George Washington who was never laid in it, forty Doric columns, and long stone corridors that were patrolled alone at night for a century. Capitol guides still tell it, which is about the best provenance a ghost can have.